EVGA 670 FTW or Gigabyte 670 for SLI - Page 3

I'm hoping to post a short review of the EVGA GTX 670 FTW model sometime this weekend, if things go according to plan I don't have any cards to compare it to, besides the EVGA GTX 670 (vanilla), though.

Please, do so!
It'll be a good read and help enlight us who are torn between the Asus, Gb and EVGA non ref 670s...

Put me down for a review, even though, I've already ordered two of them.

I'm in a similar situation to the OP. Would either the EVGA 670 FTW or Gigabyte WindForce 670 be better if I water cooled? By water cooling, I would need to add a GPU water block, which would replace the Gigabyte fan, correct? Thus, would the FTW be the better option for water cooling?

No one answered quickly, so I ultimately decided to get the EVGA FTW. I placed the order not too long ago, and feel free to tune in to my build log if you're curious to see how it goes.
Edited by Passion - 6/20/12 at 10:35am

This one is hard to say, both cards use the 680 PCB, the EVGA exhausts the heat out of the case, the Gigabyte exhausts heat inside the case. Personally I would go EVGA if you plan on doubling up, because the top card will just heat up the bottom card with the Gigabyte variant. As others here already mentioned.
I can't speak for the Gigabyte, but I just got an EVGA FTW and I am very happy with it, I can barely hear the fan at full load (Inside of Storm Trooper case).
I replaced my blown Sapphire 7950 OC with it and the EVGA is definitely the faster card, the AMD had high peak speeds, but they were very unstable, whereas the nVidia constantly had high FPS without the drops in between.

The only reason I swapped cards and dropped another $400+ into a GPU was because Sapphire has the WORST customer service policies on the planet. My card fried (no OCing) after 33 days of purchase and they told me the RMA (which should have been a DOA in the first place) will take 2 months and I will be receiving a refurb instead of a new one, on top of it I had to pay $45 for shipping it to Hong Kong (which I avoided by getting my retailer to ship it out in the end). So that was my rant.

Overall I am VERY happy with the EVGA, I noticed that some people say it's loud because it uses an OEM cooler, my guess is that most people making these claims are either overly sensitive, or do not have personal hands on experience with the FTW. I can't tell you which card is quieter the Gigabyte or the EVGA because I only ever have had hands on experience with the EVGA. Your best bet will be to read the reviews and hopefully someone mentions the in case temps with 2 FTW and 2 Gigabytes inside a HAF X case.

I've had EVGA cards in the past, 6800GT was DOA and the EVGA rep treated me like a moron, but they advanced RMA'ed a new inbox card to me. Second was a 7800GT that just lasted under a year and EVGA replaced it with a 8800GTS 320MB which was ok.

So what I'm getting at is that yes EVGA has a great warranty policy but their cards need them. Look at the small problem they had with the 670 SOC.

Right now I'm running a Gigabyte 670, out of the box boost freq was 1225Mhz, temps topped out at 64C after 3 hours of BF3 with an ambient of 23C.

I put the Gigabyte under water with a XSPC razor 680 block. temps top out at 43C and I'm OC'ing with +125 boost 111% power.

I had nothing  but the best luck with Evga.I love their cards and they are pretty much the only video cards i buy.(seriously)Gigabyte has good cards too even though i never owned one Ive heard they have a rep for OCing pretty well .

Edited by mothow - 7/4/12 at 8:48am

Have an old EVGA 9800GT in a computer I built that still works from what 2008 I think? Parents still use the computer, and the ol' man still does some gaming on it (really old games though). EVGA is fine. Really happy with my GTX 670 FTW so far myself.
Edited by Sir Beregond - 7/1/12 at 12:08pm

 we have almost the same rigs